Artist Statement
When I photographed the ballerina, I really liked the way it cast a shadow on the lid of the jewelry box. I played around with the lighting until I got exactly what I wanted from the shadows the dancer cast, to the way the her face was lit. The dancer in the music box was originally a fairy until my brother ripped its wings off in one of the more tragic moments of my childhood. The music box with the ballerina is special to me because it was one of the first jewelry boxes I ever received and I can remember being very excited about it because it was around the time I got my ears pierced and my mom was starting to let me wear more “big girl jewelry.” I would wind it up over and over again to watch the dancer (well, fairy at the time) spin round and round. I went to a waldorf school at the time so everything from that period of my life is whimsically themed and so when I rediscovered this music box in some of my old things, it brought back memories of my early childhood. One problem I had to contend with was that my camera lens had just gotten back from being fixed and they were not able to fix the motor for the automatic focus because they didn’t have the part on hand. This forced me to focus my pictures myself which was new for me and ended up being pretty tricky. On the bright side, I got a lot more practice focusing manually and learned a lot from the experience.